You have questions and we want to help! Here are some answers to the most commonly asked questions about our service.
CPCommerce Sync Interface
The CPCommerce Sync Interface provides visibility to what is happening behind the scenes as it syncs your product, inventory, order, and other business data between platforms.
It also allows you to control how your data syncs with options to change how frequently data syncs, manually syncing a piece of data between intervals or adding data mappings.
If you are interested in accessing the interface, feel free to contact helpdesk@cp-commerce.com. Please provide your public static IP or, if it is dynamic, the range that the IP can be. The interface is only visible to specific IP addresses for security purposes, so we will need the IP to let you through. You can find your public IP by entering "What is my IP" into Google, Yahoo, Bing, or your preferred search engine.
Sign-in
The interface is located at a specific website address that we can provide to you. Reach out to helpdesk@cp-commerce.com and we can help get you setup.
Please provide the following information with your request:
- your public static IP or, if it is dynamic, the range that the IP can be.
- You can find your public IP by entering "What is my IP" into Google, Yahoo, Bing, or your preferred search engine.
- If you plan on accessing this from other devices that are at different IPs (for example, your home computer vs. your work computer), please let us know the other IPs as well.
- your admin panel user
Once you have the website address, you will be able to sign-in with the same credentials you use for the website admin panel.
To sign-in to the interface, use the same credentials as the Magento admin panel. After 6 tries, there will be a temporarily lock on your sign-in for security purposes.
When a user is inactive in the interface for too long, they are automatically signed out.
If you queued items, orders, or other data, they will still sync.
Sync Overview
To follow best practices, the CPCommerce integration delegates different sync groups such as products, customers, and orders.
Each sync group comprises different related syncs, listed below:
Products
Items
Primary Responsibilities
- Adding items from the in-store system to the online system
- Updating any data that is not covered by the other syncs such as custom profiles after the item is first added
Notes
- When an item is first synced, the Items sync will bring up any data mapped by CPCommerce along with inventory, category, images, and pricing.
- After an item is added, updates to inventory, categories, images, and prices are handled by the other syncs.
Categories
Primary Responsibility
- Adding and updating your categories online
Category Items
Primary Responsibility
- Assigning items to categories
Inventories
Primary Responsibility
- Updating the inventory online with what is in your store
Notes
- If you have variations such as a small red shirt, it will break inventory down to the individual variation.
- For example, if you have 8 shirts total and only 3 small red shirts, the site will only allow customers to purchase 3 small red shirts.
- If you have a multistore site, this will break down inventory per location.
Images
Primary Responsibility
- Adding and updating your product images online
Notes
- The images must have been discovered by the Image Changes sync first.
Image Changes
Primary Responsibility
- Verifies which images to sync to the website and notifies the Images sync about images being added, updated, or removed
Notes
- This sync is typically run once on a nightly basis due to the nature of images.
- In order for an image to be synced to the site, it must be first be found by the Image Changes sync.
Price Changes
Primary Responsibility
- Updating your product prices online
Notes
- This sync is typically run once on a nightly basis as price changes are typically happen less frequently than other concerns such as orders and inventory.
Customers
Primary Responsibility
- Creating customer accounts online, updating customer information,
Notes
- By default, this sync runs every hour.
Loyalties
Primary Responsibility
- Updating your product prices online
Notes
- By default, this sync is run every ten (10) minutes.
Rewards
Orders
Orders
Activities
Gift Cards
Price Rules
Event Tickets
Items
Syncing
Products and their inventory sync every ten (10) minutes by default.
- Most product updates are brought up via the "Items" sync. This includes but is not limited
- New items will sync their inventory, categories, images, and pricing.
Categories and which items are assigned to them are synced every ten (10 minutes) as well.
The default is every ten (10) minutes.
Customers
Syncing
When the site first goes live, if you have requested customers to be synced or are using our loyalty or price rules extensions, CPCommerce will initially sync the store’s most recent customers up to the site.
This is a gradual process to ensure the welcome emails are not caught in any spam filters from the sudden surge of emails from the website server.
After the customer base has finished syncing, the sync will automatically bring up any new customers and customer information updates.
By default, this happens every hour.
We do this to ensure customers who have not shopped at the store in a while do not receive unwanted mail and mark it as spam.
- When a customer marks an email as spam, it can affect the reliability of emails from the website being received.
The sync will automatically bring up in-store customers from Counterpoint on three main conditions:
- The account has a first and last name.
- The account has a unique and valid email address.
Customers need a unique valid email address for two reasons:
- It must be unique because this is what the customer uses to sign in to the site.
- It must be valid because, after the customer syncs, they will receive an email to set up a password on the site.
- The account is marked as ecommerce.
- Customers need to be marked as ecommerce because this setting is how the sync knows which customers should sync up to the site. This setting can be found in the customer lookup under the Ecommerce tab.
Once a customer account matches those conditions, the customer will automatically sync to the site.
One reason could be the customer email in Counterpoint is not the one the customer is expecting or is no longer valid.
- When a customer syncs, an account will be created with that address and they will need to set up a password for it.
- A link will be sent to the customer's email in Counterpoint, so if it is not valid or the customer no longer uses that address, then they may not receive it.
Account / Sign-in
When a customer is synced from Counterpoint, an account will be created on the ecommerce store.
The account's email will be the one on the in-store / Counterpoint customer. If the customer does not have an email address, they will not sync up to the site.
The customer will receive a welcome email to set up a password for their account.
They can create an account through the Create an Account link in the header.
This may be found by clicking the person icon and then the link will show in the dropdown menu.
Orders
When such a customer places an order online, the order will be assigned to that existing Counterpoint account.
This will also happen for guest orders with an email address that matches one in Counterpoint.
When such a customer places an order online and it syncs into Counterpoint, a new Counterpoint customer will be created and associated with that order.
Future orders will be assigned to that new Counterpoint customer.
You may need to merge the customer if this happens. As a note, the new Counterpoint account will be marked as ecommerce and accounts marked as ecommerce cannot be merged into by default.
To merge the customers, you will need to uncheck the ecommerce box for that customer in Counterpoint, merge from the previous customer number to the online customer number, and then recheck the box. For more questions about Counterpoint customer merging, please contact your Counterpoint partner.
When such a customer places an order and it syncs into Counterpoint, they will have a new Counterpoint customer created for them and associated with that order.
Future orders will be associated with that customer.
You may need to merge the customer if this happens. As a note, the new Counterpoint account will be marked as ecommerce and accounts marked as ecommerce cannot be merged into by default.
To merge the customers, you will need to uncheck the ecommerce box for that customer in Counterpoint, merge from the previous customer number to the online customer number, and then recheck the box. For more questions about Counterpoint customer merging, please contact your Counterpoint partner.
If the customer creates another account with an address that is different than the one in Counterpoint, you may want to combine the sale histories.
To do so, you will want to merge the old Counterpoint account into the new online one.
As a note, the new Counterpoint account will be marked as ecommerce and accounts marked as ecommerce cannot be merged into by default. To merge the customers, you will need to uncheck the ecommerce box for that customer in Counterpoint, merge from the previous customer number to the online customer number, and then recheck the box.
Merging the customers will not update the online loyalty balance with in-store customer’s loyalty i.e. if the customer had 25 points in store and the customer had 25 points online, after the merge the customer would have 50 points in Counterpoint but only 25 points online.
Loyalty
By default, loyalty points are not accrued and cannot be redeemed on the site. If you are interested in this feature, please contact our team at helpdesk@cp-commerce.com for more information.
The loyalty will not be in sync. You will most likely want to merge the existing customer with the customer created for the online account to have a single record for that customer.
- As a note, customers that need to be merged will not have access to the full in-store Counterpoint loyalty balance online and will only receive new balance changes.
- This is usually not an issue because after go-live the customer base is synced and the customer would receive a notification that an account was created for them with that email address.
When an order is synced, if the customer does not match a customer in Counterpoint either by customer number or by email, a new Counterpoint customer is created and associated with the order.
- If this happens, then the loyalty points would go on that new account.
To reconcile the points between an in-store and online account, you will want to merge the old Counterpoint-only account into the new one.
- As mentioned, ecommerce accounts cannot be merged into by default. You will need to uncheck ecommerce in Counterpoint, merge it, and then recheck the box.
If the customer does not have a loyalty history on the site, when the customer first syncs, the current loyalty balance for that Counterpoint customer will be brought up.
After the first sync, changes to the loyalty balance online and in Counterpoint will sync between the platforms afterward.
Gift Cards
By default, gift cards are not redeemable or purchasable on the site. Please contact our team at helpdesk@cp-commerce.com for more information.
Any gift cards stored as actual gift cards and not store credit in Counterpoint will sync up to the site and be redeemable there.
If gift cards are stored as store credit, please contact your Counterpoint partner to change those to gift cards.
Yes, any gift cards purchased online will have the code sync into Counterpoint and be redeemable in-store.